Entry tags:

nonfiction, short stories

Nonfiction: Cat Walk (Revised)
Title: Cat Walk
Author: Mark Freeman
Word count: 1895
Summary: This story, part of my final portfolio for Advanced Composition, is revised from a previous entry. While the story is written from the perspective of a local cat, the animal serves as a vehicle to explore the lives of the people living in suburbia, and their desire to escape.

Cat Walk

The orange tabby knows this neighborhood better than anyone. For her, the rows of aging houses tucked away in the hills form a suburban jungle. While she may not look like an adventurer, the cat often treks on foreign lawns, prowling, pawing – until dinnertime.

From a cat’s eye view, the quiet little cul de sac is more than just a collection of houses – it’s full of dull colors and infinite sounds. The cat stares down from the top stair of her house. She’s lying in a shady spot, but the sun intrudes and forces her to move. She descends to the street.

First stop on patrol – the nearest lawn. A thousand unmowed grass blades erupt from the recently sprinkled ground, and the cat looks like a shrunken tiger, slinking through the grass. Green, endless green, shuffling slightly with feline movement, an opening in the grass now – is there a watering hole on the horizon? No, just dead soil with some tiny, defiant saplings.

Through a part in the grass, the cat sees the mechanic tinkering with a car. It’s a badly repainted Chevy Impala, but paint isn’t the issue. He suspects something is wrong with the engine – this car no longer charges down highways, but limps from one auto shop to the next. It was likely driven without respect from its driver, a pudgy faced man who leaves beer cans in the trunk. As the cat curls under his faded pickup truck, the mechanic wipes greased hands on oil-stained jeans. Sweat trickles from his clipped salt and pepper mane.

He trudges into the garage for a moment, but not for tools. Instead he wheels out a Harley Davidson. The motorcycle glitters in the sun, chrome fenders reflect a youthful smile. He forgets the Impala and its engine for a moment. Sweaty palms dig into the handlebars. He wants to rev the engine loudly, make the two-wheeled beast roar. He recalls the days when he didn’t care about the speed limit.

“Dinner,” his wife says. She’s on the phone – her mother’s calling again – distracted. She ignores the motorcycle and gives her husband an impatient glance from the window. From inside, he hears his grown daughter, who doesn’t feel like moving out, ask when she can start eating. The mechanic looks back at the Harley – it seems to have aged twenty years. Or is that just the weary face in the greasy mirror? He wheels it back inside, leaves the Impala in the driveway. The garage door shuts, obscuring the open road.

The cat yawns and scratches her back. Her attention shifts.

Asphalt. Hard and grainy, it comes apart as she gingerly steps across it, little bits of tar scattering away from the swish of her paws. She’s focused on the ground, small, delicate nose twitching in the air. What smells! The far off barbecue, brand new tires, freshly watered grass. Another cat. Where? Too far off – she ignores it, but later on the two will do battle in her backyard, hissing and clawing, a scene of arched fur and backs but with no violence, just the new gray tabby slinking off in defeat.

The cat sits on the lawn opposite the mechanic’s. Her tail rustles the chemically sprayed grass. Suddenly she’s rising into the air, feet pawing at nothing. A soft voice whispers her name. Is it the Tall Woman Who Feeds Her? She salivates, anticipating catnip.

Small hands dig into her sides. The fingernails are painted purple. The cat turns its head. She is held by the Young Girl Who Pets Her. The girl nuzzles the cat, doesn’t let her go. The cat surrenders, relaxes into the embrace. The girl’s hands tickle the cat’s belly, and she rolls over, adventurers forgotten for the moment.

The girl sits on the lawn, not caring about grass stains. She plays with the cat’s face and talks about her day, stuck at home. She’s always here – home schooled. Nothing to do. She casually picks leaves from a spiky bush – one, two, three, eleven – she’ll be eleven soon. Maybe then she can stay up later like her older sister or be allowed to talk to the boys down the street. Her mother watches from the window and admires her daughter’s short, uncombed hair, the kind she used to have long ago.

On the doorstep sits a large, unopened package addressed to the girl’s father. It likely contains several of Daddy’s new travel guides – at dinner he will bring them out and show her places that look different from here, places with rocks the size of this house and mountains that dare rise toward heaven. He always wants to go places but mother complains about money. He complains she’s too focused on the money, but the girl only wants them to be quiet and eat. The sealed box on the porch reminds the girl that she wants to climb inside a package and mail herself to Oregon. She’s never been there, but that won’t deter her. Oregon will be quieter, there she won’t have to listen to her mother’s lectures about how raising horses – her dream – is impractical. “But the horses will be safe with me,” she tells the cat.

She squeezes the cat tighter when she talks about her mother. She won’t let the girl have any fun. Study, study – nothing to do. “Just you watch me get away,” she says. She squeezes too tightly and the cat growls. She wriggles away and trots over to an oak tree at the far end of the cul de sac. The girl sighs, recalls she has homework and lugs the package inside with her.

The cat rubs its back against the tree, a remnant from when the neighborhood was nothing but wide space and roaming livestock. Oak trees like this one towered over the horses, which drank in the shade. But unbeknownst to them, the farmer drank in the shade with a real estate agent. It was time to sell – the future was coming. On the empty hills, bulldozers groaned and kick up dirt.

The farmer’s house still remains today, enveloped by suburbia. In this little oasis, the old man sits atop a broken tractor, watching his few horses nibble at the dirt. He stares up at the hills, marvels at the large, expensive houses which tower over the aging neighborhood. There – bulldozers working on a new foundation. He relies on geese with clipped wings to guard his property. They announce whenever pedestrians walk too close to the fence. But he has little to worry. After all, what’s there to steal? Only manure and the stench of the past.

Back to the concrete world, the cat gazes down the street. Winged creatures peck and prattle on a neighbor’s steps. The cat, hungry, glances at the birds as they zip across the ground, collecting branches for a nest. Back arched, eyes wide, she stalks. Claws unsheathed now, whiskers at the ready – a flash of orange leaps from the grass! The chirping stops, then resumes, just higher now, out of reach. The tabby scratches the tree, debates climbing it, looks at the birds again and then jumps.

While the cat leaps, an SUV trundles down the street and parks in front of a white, two-story house. The Italian father steps out to enjoy the fresh breeze. Just back from the elementary school down the block, he’s nearing retirement and looks forward to when he can just sit by the pool and listen to baseball games – not grade essays. He sniffs the air – not as clean as it used to be – and adjusts his glasses.

But the air turns stale as his daughter pulls into the driveway abruptly. She steps out, red midriff and all, with a new boyfriend in tow. She’s sixteen with bleached blonde hair and a pierced nose. The father coughs a bit – she’s trying to break away too fast, too young. The daughter scowls – he’s trying to stop her from becoming a woman.

The father sighs and looks out, smiling for a moment at the cat trying to swat birds down the street. At least one of us enjoys the day, he thinks, before he turns to the daughter and begins asking what she thinks she’s doing with her life.

The cat searches for snails in the grass while father and daughter battle. Lots of angry words echo down the street. “You said I was old enough to date who I want!” she says. “If you were responsible,” he sternly replies. The red-faced boy tries to look small, but the girl clutches his arm like a squeeze toy – squeeze here to relieve stress. The father motions to his daughter to come inside. “We don’t want the neighbors to hear us,” he says.

Now that the sun gets low, the noise picks up as people return from school and work. Across the neighborhood, doors slam, people sigh, tired – home at last. Now they can relax. The mechanic has a football game on. Maybe his team will win for once As the quarterback fires a pass, he cheers, his family smiling with him. The Italian father says a few choice words to his daughter and sounds of their trench warfare slip through an open window. Later on, the sounds become musical – the father, tired of arguing, lets loose by playing his trumpet.

The neighborhood, no longer quiet, causes the cat to stir. Her attention shifts.

The cat gazes down at the oak at the end of the block, looking off into the unknown. Most likely she’s never been Out There, preferring to stay within the confines of marked territory and a comfy home with meals courtesy of the Tall Woman Who Feeds Her. Beyond the stop sign at the end of the street, lights wink on in once lifeless houses. A teenager turns up his rock music and it filters down the street. Above, a jet cuts through the now pink sky. The cat creeps ever closer down the road, occasionally curling up by the vehicles that she only enters when she visits the Man Who Gives Her Shots. Is it possible there is still a wild animal left in this domesticated bundle of fur?

The tabby would not be the first to run away. Tattered signs still hang from telephone poles, pleas to find this cat who weigh this many pounds and answers to this name. Reward will be offered. Often the only reward is heartache – countless visits to the pound followed by, “I’m sorry, we’ve heard nothing.” These animals gave into instinct and went Out There, but their emancipation only imprisons their owners. Is this the fate of the orange tabby?

The cat looks Out There again, moves a hesitant paw forward, sniffs the wind. But then she hears a voice call her name. She turns back. It is the Tall Woman Who Feeds Her. She’s back from patrolling the highways and now waits for her pet to finish its patrol. The cat withdraws her paw. Despite her instincts, she can’t help but remember the bed where she can roll around at night without worrying about large black dogs. No, she is domesticated. Because at the end of the day, there’s no better place to be than curled up around a ball of yarn, the street left outside for another day. The queen of the concrete jungle rests easy that night.